MOTHERS A SONG FOR WARTIME

***** 5 stars for MOTHERS

“The intensely beautiful, chilling MOTHERS, A SONG FOR WARTIME could be called an act of liberation.” MOTHERS A SONG FOR WARTIME received five stars from NRC.

Shira Keller, NRC

“The opening performince of SPRING Performing Arts Festival in Utrecht is by a woman’s choir who sing a protest performance that hits like a bomb.”
Annette Embrechts, de Volkskrant, May 21 2024

In the form of songs, lullabies, nursery rhymes, poems, magical formulas, declarations of resistance, and testimonies that weave the score, rhythm, and movement of this female multitude. Body, voice, and collective intelligence as a prodigious result of stories, tears, wounds, nostalgias, rebellions. It is a protest, an accusation, a plea, a warning, and also a hope, the one that is declared immediately, at the beginning of the show, with a traditional Ukrainian song (shchedrivka).
Sara Chiappori, La Repubblica

This hour is an eternity and overwhelming dread.
You have seen and experienced things for which there are no words.
About which they speak and sing here, together, in a clear and strict form.
With an attitude that moves and shocks.
Rüdiger Schaper, TAGESSPIEGEL

Human greatness against the brutality of war.
This evening is a choral tale from the strength of the individual, which tells of dark violence and ends in bright humanity.
Doris Meierhenrich, BERLINER ZEITUNG , Marta Górnicka’s miracle weapon against the war in the Berlin Maxim Gorki Theatre.

MOTHERS A SONG FOR WARTIME of Marta Górnicka, this is the proposition of big theatrical and political strength.
Manuel Piolat Soleymat, LA TERASSE

In MOTHERS artist Marta Górnicka proposes powerful political reactivation of antique chorus
Caroline Chatelet SCENEWEB.FR       

***** 5 stars for MOTHERS
The latest incarnation of Marta Górnicka’s choral project is a strong, moving, perfectly constructed and performed statement by woman experienced by war and dictatorship
Aneta Kyzioł, POLITYKA

Shchedrivka performed by a choir of grandmothers, mothers, and daughters is simply moving. And for several reasons. Firstly, because it is about regaining the voice and the place where this voice can be heard. Secondly, because it contains wishes for all of us. Thirdly, because of the tribute to the tradition of Ukrainian singing, a living voice that pierces and deeply touches. This singing is a space which cannot be appropriated. And this voice is a voice that, despite everything, cannot be silenced.
Wiktoria Tabak, DIDASKALIA

Le Maillon Theatre Strasbourg presents the French premiere of MOTHERS – A SONG FOR WARTIME by Polish director Marta Górnicka. When a chorus of women speaks the reality of the current war, making theater an art in direct contact with the present. This proposal of great theatrical and political force will be on the program of the next Avignon Festival.
Manuel Piolat Soleymat, LA TERASSE

A performance of 21 Ukrainian, Polish, Belarusian mothers and their children.

The wartime rituals of violence against women are unchanging. War asks Europe the ultimate questions: about responsibility in the face of danger, and about our defense mechanisms. Out of the testimonies of mothers and children—Ukrainians, Belarusians and Poles: those who have fled war; those who have fled persecution; and, finally, those who have welcomed them in Polish homes—Marta Górnicka, director, initiator of the CHORUS OF WOMEN and the founder of the Political Voice Institute at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, creates a choral performance with her cast.

The cast comprises 21 Ukrainian, Polish and Belarusian women aged 9 to 72, each with her unique political experience and a different life story; some are survivors from Mariupol, Kyiv, Irpin and Kharkiv. This CHORUS OF MOTHERS FOR WARTIME seeks a new post-operatic choral voice that draws from the female chori of the seventh century BC.

They mix Ukrainian nursery rhymes, traditional songs, incantations and political statements.

The performance For Wartime opens with a shchedrivka (Ukr. щедрівка) – a traditional Ukrainian song, a well-wish for happiness and rebirth. These date back to pre-Christian times and are likely thousands of years old. The ritual of singing a shchedrivka was performed by women only, or by women and children. It was always addressed to a particular person. People believed in the power of the song, trusting that its words and the well-wishes would surely come true. Today, these sung wishes are addressed to all people, for a new time; for their entire life.

Excerpt from Marta Górnicka’s speech in Avignon on 20 July 2023:

A war is being fought in Ukraine. This war has been happening for many months now. A war you might not know much about. A war which perhaps, from time to time, disappears from our field of vision. A war which is too close not to care—and maybe this is why we don’t want to think about it. Then, we easily switch from atrocious images to memes with cats and dogs on Facebook and Instagram.

This is why this performance is being produced.